Essays

Moseying: Outdoor Recreation Activities

The gypsum of Rustler Hills: A barren worthless landscape – or fascinating and amazing?
August 27, 2008

“Look at all the Anulocaulis – it is almost the only thing growing in this moonscape.” Michael Eason of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (LBJWC, now administered by the University of Texas) swept his arm across the hillside in front of us. We had collected over 40,000 seeds of three species of plants for the Millennium Seed Bank Project during the morning, and were now snacking along side the road before one of our group had to leave for El Paso. We were 40 miles west of Orla, with the Guadalupe Mountains looming to the west. A cool breeze swept over us toward the mountains, where afternoon thunderheads were beginning to build.

Dr. Wynn Anderson of University of Texas at El Paso fingered one of the stalks. “Interesting wings on the seeds, but that I don’t see the rings on the stem that gives it the common name of gyp ringstem.” Dr. Anderson has created a botanical garden at UTEP with over 700 species of plants. The back of his SUV was full of plants he had gotten at the Sul Ross University (SRU) greenhouse.

Patty Manning, the supervisor of the SRU greenhouse grimaced. “The seeds aren’t ready yet, and I don’t think I could duplicate the growing conditions very easily.” Patty is the best plant propagator in West Texas. I have several plants in my garden that I bought from her over the years that no one else had ever propagated. “Most folks would call this a horribly ugly landscape, but it is fascinating if you stop and take a look.”

Patty Manning preparing the voucher specimen of Gaillardia multiceps

Gypsum crystals glinted among the rocks on the hillside. Gyp breccia, rocks layered with bands of gray and black, formed a pavement on which we stood. The gypsum hills are home to very unusual plants. Some are endemics, limited to just this small region of Culberson and Reeves Counties. Dr. Michael Powell and the late Dr. Barton Warnock, both of SRU, had brought attention to the rare flora to the botanical community in their field guides to West Texas plants. Ms. Manning had created the drawings for Powell’s book of Trans-Pecos grasses.

A few plants were growing along with the gyp ringstem's and its big silver gray leaves and tall spinly flower and seed stalks. Nama carnosum, with tiny tubular white flowers peeking out of bright green brillo pad mounds, grew near dark green mounds of Tiquilia gossypina with tiny pink flowers the size of this.

Martin Simonton, a native plant grower from Lake Conroe, Texas, crunched across the crumbly crust of the “soil” surface. “You have to go out of your way to step on a plant here. I haven’t ever been down this road before. I have been to Dell City on plant hunting expeditions.” He had ridden out to West Texas with Eason, and the four botanists had spent the last three days collecting seeds near Sanderson and in the Davis Mountains.

Earlier we had collected seeds of Gaillardia multiceps, a perennial daisy with yellow ray flowers and red disc flowers. It forms a tight green mound covered with dozens of blooms. We all went from plant to plant along the highway, bending over to collect one to three seed heads per plant. Each seedhead had 30-50 seeds. It only took us thirty minutes to collect the 20,000 seeds needed for the Millenium seed project.

The "Barren Landscape"

Along the same stretch of road we also collected 10,000 seeds (in 2000 berries) of Lycium torreyi, a chest-tall shrub commonly called wolfberry, and about as many seeds of Nerisyrenia liinerarifolia, 20 seeds to a silique (seedpod). We had to get down on the ground on our knees to pick the siliques. Manning prepared a half-dozen voucher herbarium specimens of each species. All of the group took digital pictures of all of the mentioned species, plus others that caught our eyes.

We were in three vehicles, each emblazoned with the emblems and names of the three universities. Even though it was obvious we were working along the road with a purpose, two of the half dozen cars that passed us during the hour and a half of picking, had stopped and asked if we were having car trouble. West Texans are often the most helpful of people, and we were 50 or more miles from the nearest garage, after all. On the road up from Pecos, where I had met them, the roadsides had been mowed. We had been nervous that our target area would have suffered the same assault, but as soon as we crossed into Culberson County the mowing ended.

Back in the 1980s I had helped my mother run Breeding Bird Censuses along the same stretch of road. As she counted birds, I identified wildflowers. Despite my prior botanizing experience along the road, several of the plants were new to me. Deborah and I had found the escaped exotic “Camel Thorn” along the road in late June as we returned from Juarez, Mexico where I had given a speech at the Borderland Environmental Education Conference. We had identified twenty other species of wildflowers blooming along the road, as well, but we had missed the Nama and I misidentified the Tiquilia.

I was in “hog heaven” as I helped. To spend time in the company of botanists that I admire was a blessing. Eason travels for nine months out of the year for the Millenium Seed Project. The others tend plants a good part of their time, but similar field trips are part of their yearly routine. Even so, Dr. Anderson told me, “I am slowly retiring, by turning over the operation of the garden to John White. I want to spend more of my time in the field before I can no longer get out and about. I have already quit giving talks to civic groups.”

He had headed up a plant rescue project near Carlsbad earlier in the year, before bulldozers had widened a highway.

The road is one of my favorites, despite the harshness of the landscape. The miracle of the adaptations of the various plants “blows my mind!”